Production of Nutritional Cirrhosis in Macacca mulatta Monkeys

Hepatic cirrhosis remains a major medical challenge both in regard to its pathogenesis and its treatment. The natural course of Laennec's cirrhosis, particularly its early development, does not lend itself to detailed clinical investigation, even if its victims were not so characteristically uncooperative. On the other hand, attempts to produce cirrhosis in experimental animals have either employed methods which produce a pathologic lesion significantly different from that encountered clinically (eg, carbon tetrachloride), or involved species whose livers exhibit important anatomical and physiological differences from man, or which are too small for detailed hemodynamic studies of portal hypertension and its modification by surgical shunting procedures. The production of nutritional cirrhosis in subhuman primates offers an opportunity to overcome some of these difficulties; preliminary reports by Wilgram¹ and Gaisford and Zuidema² of the production of an early "Laennec" type of cirrhosis in monkeys by a low protein, choline deficient diet